By Ahmed Bin Sulayem
Ahmed Bin Sulayem is Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, DMCC.
When Belgium’s Prime Minister Bart De Wever visited the Bharat Diamond Bourse in Mumbai recently, it celebrated a century-old relationship between two legendary diamond hubs during a period of profound structural change. Yet while Antwerp and Mumbai discussed the future, the brand most synonymous with natural diamonds was entering the final stages of an ownership change with neither centre present in the preferred-bidder structure.
India is the undeniable centre of gravity for diamond manufacturing, cutting and polishing roughly 90 per cent of the world’s gems, primarily in Surat. Its institutional footprint is equally formidable: India chairs the Kimberley Process in 2026, while figures like Mehul Shah, president of the World Federation of Diamond Bourses (WFDB); Kirit Bhansali, GJEPC Chairman and CIBJO board member; and Anoop Mehta, vice president of the World Diamond Council (WDC), drive global policy. With such unmatched authority, what has deterred India from entering the upstream mining market at such a historic price point?
When Anglo American acquired the Oppenheimer family’s 40 per cent interest in 2011, the transaction implied a total enterprise value of USD 12.75 billion. Fast forward to today: after a fresh USD 2.3 billion impairment, bringing total write-downs on De Beers to USD 6.8 billion, Anglo has slashed the unit’s carrying value to just USD 2.3 billion, driving Anglo to a USD 3.7 billion annual loss. Against this backdrop, reported discussions around Anglo’s 85 per cent stake sit at roughly USD 1 billion, well below even its newly written-down valuation.
That said, even at its current price point, an investment isn’t without steep operational hurdles. De Beers recorded an underlying EBITDA loss of USD 511 million in 2025 alongside a contracting supply base. Global rough production fell to 98.8 million carats in 2025, its lowest level since Kimberley Process records began in 2004. Production has been paused at Venetia in South Africa for two years, alongside delays at Canada’s Gahcho Kué, while Okavango Diamond Company’s allocation in Botswana rises toward 50 per cent by 2035. Crucially, massive capital commitments lie ahead; for example, the Jwaneng Underground alone requires an estimated USD 6 billion, while the primary rough market is worth roughly USD 5 billion annually.
India has rational reasons for caution, and its national financial policy offers a telling parallel. Facing pressure on the rupee, New Delhi recently appealed to households to curb gold imports after purchases reached a record USD 71.98 billion. Does a similar capital-preservation instinct explain India’s absence from De Beers?
Only partly. Affordability is not the barrier. A 5 to 10 per cent equity stake in De Beers would cost between USD 59 million and USD 118 million, a fraction of a single week of India’s bullion imports. When New Delhi deems a raw material strategically indispensable, as with its state-backed acquisition of lithium assets in Argentina through KABIL, it deploys capital decisively. The inference is not a lack of foreign exchange, but a deliberate choice not to classify upstream diamond mining as a strategic state asset. Furthermore, India’s embrace of laboratory-grown diamonds has become a case study for industrial resilience. The 2020 closure of Australia’s Argyle mine, which supplied the high-volume rough that built Surat’s polishing engine, underscored the risk of single-source reliance, while its agility in pivoting to laboratory-grown diamonds provided an essential insurance policy for hundreds of thousands of local artisans.
Following that logic, India may have concluded that direct ownership of a mining house confers less power than controlling the processing bottleneck. Whoever acquires De Beers must still rely on Surat to convert rough stones into revenue, while navigating a regulatory landscape shaped by Indian institutional leadership – both points of immense market influence without capital outlay.
Three potential scenarios explain India’s current stance. First, Indian investors may have carefully analysed De Beers’ long-term liabilities and contracting production portfolio, concluding that the capital-adjusted returns simply do not justify the risk. Second, despite its massive industrial scale, India’s private diamond sector may remain too fragmented to assemble the multi-billion-dollar, consortium capital required for deep-level kimberlite mining. Finally, India could be exercising tactical patience, watching from the sidelines while Anglo, Botswana, and third-party bidders negotiate, fully aware that as the transaction nears its conclusion, leverage shifts toward the nation naturally controlling 90 per cent of global polishing capacity. Yet, relying solely on manufacturing leverage carries risks. African producer nations are organising around equity and domestic allocations specifically to capture downstream value and reduce reliance on external cutting hubs.
Indisputably, India holds more influence across the diamond pipeline today than at any point in history. The ultimate question is whether it will use that influence purely to command the processing bottleneck, or extend its capital deeper into Africa to help secure the natural diamond economy at its source.
(Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy or position of Jewellery Outlook.)
